The present invention relates to a silver halide photographic material that produces a dye image affording improved color reproduction and image keeping quality, as well as high maximum density.
To conventional cyan couplers that have high resistance to fading in the dark and which are used in photographic materials for direct viewing such as color papers are 2,5-diacylamino based cyan couplers and phenolic cyan couplers that have an alkyl group with 2 or more carbon atoms at the 5-position. However, the dyes formed from 2,5-diacylamino based cyan couplers have a maximum absorption peak in the shorter wavelength range than those obtained from commonly employed phenolic cyan couplers that do not have any acylamino group at the 5-position, and because of the large magenta color component that results from the absorption at the tail of the short-wavelength side of the absorption spectrum, it is difficult to achieve satisfactory reproduction of a brilliant green color. The phenolic cyan couplers that have an alkyl group with 2 or more carbon atoms at the 5-position also have the disadvantage that the dyes formed from such couplers have a large yellow component near 420 nm that prevents satisfactory reproduction of a brilliant blue color.
With the recent concern over environmental pollution and the need to keep a good working condition, it has become desirable to use color developing solutions that do not contain any benzyl alcohol that works as an accelerator of color formation. One problem with this approach is that if a silver halide color photographic material that employs a 2,5-diacylamino based cyan coupler or a phenolic cyan coupler that has an alkyl group with 2 or more carbon atoms at the 5-position is processed with a benzyl alcohol free color developer, the resulting color density is insufficient to attain a desired maximum value.
Cyan couplers suitable for use in high-sensitivity imaging silver halide color photographic materials are known and they are the phenolic cyan couplers that have a ureido group at the 2-position of the phenolic nucleus as shown in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 65134/1981, 204543/1982, 204544/1982, 204545/1982, 33249/1983, 33251/1983 and 33252/1983 (the term OPI as used herein means an unexamined published Japanese patent application). Such phenolic cyan couplers are superior to the conventional naphtholic cyan couplers in that the resulting cyan dyes will not experience fading by reduction in the bleaching or bleach-fixing step. Furthermore, the maximum absorption of the resulting dyes occurs in the shorter wavelength range of the spectrum than that of the dyes formed by the conventional naphtholic cyan couplers.
It has therefore been desired to develop a silver halide photographic material that employs a cyan coupler capable of forming a durable cyan dye image (i.e., a cyan dye image having improved resistance to fading either in the dark or by reduction) and which provides improved color reproduction due to improvement in the spectral absorption characteristics of the cyan dye and which has the additional advantage that a satisfactory color density can be attained by color development with a benzyl alcohol free color developing solution.